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The fight ended rather suddenly when a big white-bearded old dude wearing a tan Members Only jacket burst onto the scene from out of nowhere and starting punching everybody in the face and stepping and crushing a formerly happy but alarmed young couple’s wicker picnic basket. Finally, a pink-haired punk woman with a pierced septum made an appeal to civility and orderly society by screaming that it was time to get the cops. I don’t want to glorify violence here (although it was very exciting) and so I’ll skip the other details of the fight and go right to the terrible aftermath of the violence, which should serve to dissuade anybody from utilizing violent means to resolve conflict in the future. After the winner of the fight (not counting the picnic basket stomping Santa Claus, who didn’t really seem to have a clear objective in entering the melee, aside from punching people in the face) fled the train at the Fullerton stop, we other passengers made some room for the loser of the fight to sit down. “Could somebody loan me a mirror?” he asked. An asian woman passed him a stylish compact mirror from her purse and he looked at the knot at his forehead and his swollen cheek and then hung his head in dismay. “Woe!” he wailed, “now all the botox is going to flow from my forehead and into my cheeks and chin!” Brian 12:08 AM Wednesday, June 11, 2003 Somebody,..no, make that a group of people, just walked down the hall stomping and looking in my office and laughing. I may, or may not, have been napping at my desk when the stompers stomped by. I think that they may have been trying to wake me up. At first, I was a little bit peeved about it. I felt like running down the hall to their desks and then stomping around while shouting, “There! How do you like it?! How do you like it when you are trying to work or nap and somebody keeps stomping around!!” But then I realized - I’m like that Koala bear in the zoo. You know, like when you go to the zoo when you’re only twelve years old after you’ve pleaded for months and months with your parents to go to the zoo because you read about the Koala bear coming to town in a notice posted in a bookmobile. But then when you finally get a chance to see him the Koala bear is just holding onto a tree in the back of its habitat and sleeping and it’s heartbreakingly disappointing because he’s not dancing or singing or solving crimes or giving out hugs like you had anticipated for the last five months. I mean, that lazy Koala bear wasn’t even, like, eating Fig Newtons or practicing judo moves or taking a dump or anything! It made me all teary-eyed and I had demanded that my Father remind the zookeeper about his obligations to entertain zoo-goers and wake the Koala bear up by poking it with a stick. And when that failed I also vaguely remember stomping and clapping and shouting at the Koala bear, until I was forcibly removed from the Koala bear habitat viewing area. So I guess I can’t really blame these stompers. I mean, there I was, just sleeping in my habitat. That’s not exciting. I can’t blame them for wanting to see me doing something interesting, like drinking coffee out of a styrofoam cup, or nervously plucking my eyebrow hairs while doing Westlaw research and putting them in a little pouch that I made out of a large post-it note and some staples, or writing an entry for this blog while periodically looking at some research notes so that it looks like I’m being productive. I only hope that Koala bear can forgive me. I mean, nowadays he’s probably miserable and imprisoned somewhere in a Koala bear breeding program, forced to eat Viagra-laced Fig Newtons and walk two hours a day on a Koala-sized treadmill, when all he ever wanted to be was a Koala bear poet. But still, I hope that Koala bear can forgive me. Brian 2:44 PM Sunday, June 08, 2003 “Now that! THAT’S CONVENIENCE!” my new neighbor kept shouting yesterday. Please allow me provide the necessary background to put his shouting in context: I moved last week but yesterday was the first chance I really had to “move in.” This last work week was all about crawling between anonymous boxes to sleep on my official Sears Sir Edmund Hillary cot in the kitchen and wearing the same pair of black socks to work everyday because my other pair of black socks was packed in a box somewhere. But so anyway, yesterday I had my first chance to start settling in and about midday I was on the porch in back beating a rug olde tyme style, like, you know, to clean it. See, traditional Chicago residential architecture seems to consist for the most part of rickety three-level brick buildings. In the back of the buildings there is always a sort of decaying wood scaffolding with a landing for each unit and stairs up through the whole mess. Usually the scaffolding is full of plants, barbecue grills, chained bicycles and pigeons that give you weary looks when you come climbing up through the scaffolding as they scuffle out of the way. The whole set-up reminds me of those pueblo houses - those houses built into the sides of a cliff with ladders up to doors. So anyway, my unit’s on the third floor and I had draped the rug over the railing and was beating it old tyme style (a little trick I picked up at an “olde tyme working farmhouse” demonstration I visited as a child - it’s a technology - beating a rug with a stick - still employed by the Amish and other technophobic rug-using cultures, or so I’m told). My building’s built in a sort of “U” shape, and there’s a valley between the two cliffs where there’s a parking lot with various dumpsters scattered around. While I was beating my rug one of my third floor neighbors from a few units down walked out onto his landing with two full plastic garbage bags and made like he was about to walk down the stairs. But then noticed that there was dumpster right beneath his landing, and then he noticed it was open. I saw him stop and think about, then he very carefully held his plastic bags over the side of the landing and dropped them into the dumpster below. I heard him mutter, “Wow, that’s really convenient!” He was out on the landing a few minutes later, this time with an old lamp and battered lampshade, which he eagerly dropped over the side of the landing into the dumpster. “Very VERY convenient!” he said. Then ensued a series of more and more preposterous items which he dropped into the dumpster - an old alligator head, a manikin arm wearing a mitten, an armload of glass jars half full of pickle juice, a framed Frida Kahlo print, a banker’s box full of faux Faberge eggs with “Easter” magic markered on the side of the box, two rubberbanded sheafs of mouldering nude woman postcards from the 70's, an old television tube. Each time he dropped something into the dumpster he shouted about how convenient it was, I could hear him shouting in his apartment. “Convenient! That’s fucking convenient, Jimbo! You hear me Jimbo? Fucking convenient!” Each time he went back into his apartment he would reappear on his landing more quickly than before, each time more agitated than the last. It was almost as if he viewed the open dumpster below him as some sort of short-lived miracle that he had to take advantage of before it disappeared. I was overcome and stopped my rug beating to stare, risking a “what’re you looking at?!” from an obviously angry and unstable man, but it was worth it. He began hurling stuff with less care and missing the dumpster. People below him in the river bottom (parking lot), were ducking and covering and pointing up at the madman on his third floor landing raining human detritus onto them. I saw the neighbors below begin to conspire among themselves, like they were readying to mount an attack on this third floor landing. But then the guy appeared on his landing and upended an old drywall mud bucket full of old doorknobs that hailed down in and around the dumpster below, bouncing off the asphalt. When the bucket was empty he hurled it off the landing with an over-the-head-two-handed throw, He-man and the Masters of the Universe style. “CONVENIENCE!!!” he bellowed. The people in the parking lot dispersed. Shortly after that the cops arrived. I went into my apartment to hide. I don’t know who Jimbo is, but his room mate is my new favorite neighbor. Brian 2:22 PM Monday, June 02, 2003 I just moved into a new place. My parents were nice enough to come into town to help me move. The move went fine, although I always doubt the sagacity of keeping a koi pond during a move, and I move at least once a year it seems. The new place has a dishwasher too, so I had ceased all dishwashing activity in anticipation of the move. Why do dishes have to be clean to move them as long as I have enough old plastic grocery bags to wrap them in? That’s just a outdated and pointless social convention, probably dating back to covered wagon times. But anyway, after we were done moving my parents wanted to drive downtown to see my office. I offered, like, a thousand times to get a taxi for us, so we wouldn’t have to drive in the downtown traffic on Saturday. Dad: “No, seriously, I LIKE to drive downtown, I find it relaxing.” Me: “Listen Dad, I never drive downtown and I wouldn’t be able to point out the streets.” Mom: “But I LIKE to navigate! And I’ve got a map of Chicago in my purse!” Me: “It’s no problem to get a taxi! And then we can just ride along and relax! Mom: “But I brought this map of Chicago!” Dad: (in a serious tone of voice) “Brian, your Mother is pretty good at reading a map.” Me: “I’m not disputing that, it’s just that the traffic gets pretty bad in the city during the weekends.” Dad: “Fiddlesticks! I’m driving!” Mom: “And this way we won’t have to find a parking spot!” Reluctantly, I got in the back seat, put on my seatbelt, checked it, and resigned myself to my fate. As background, it’s important to note that my parents are accustomed to driving in a town where what you might call the “left turn lane,” is used as the “senior citizen lane.” five minutes later.... Mom: “Watch out for that horse and cart!” Dad: “I saw that horse and cart like five minutes ago!” ... (then in a thoughtful tone of voice) “That might be a fun job, being a horse cart driver!” Mom: (in a panicky voice) “Oh! Oh! Oh! That car’s stopping! Brake Bob! Brake Bob!!” Dad: (irritated) “I’m STOPPING Sally!” Mom: “Watch out for that blue car!” Dad: “I saw that blue car. You can only point things out to me (gesturing by swinging his arm in front him, indicating a 160 degree arc in front of the car) that are outside my range of view. This is my range of view (gesturing), you should only point things out that are outside my (gesturing) range of view. Mom: “Your head keeps swivelling around!” Dad: “I’m watching the traffic!” Mom: “You are not! You’re gawking.” Dad: “I have to move my head to look at the traffic!” Mom: “Gawker!” ... “I think the guy in that truck is drunk!” Dad: “He is not drunk!” Mom: “He’s a drunkard.” (looking at her map) “Okay, maybe you could take Kinzie to Wabash, or Lake past Grand to State, or, oh, perhaps we could go Clark to Johns to Randolph street, and then circle around...” Dad: (shouting) “All these MAYBES and PERHAPS just aren’t helping! I need a fully formed plan. I need concise instructions on where to turn! I can’t “maybe” turn. I can only “turn” or “not turn!” This is a binary system! Those are your options, “turn,” or “not turn.” Mom: “Fine. Take Kinzie over to Wabash. Or maybe.....” But so anyway, to my parent’s driving and navigating credit, we made it. And the koi are doing fine. Brian 10:28 AM

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House of Noh!

Monday, June 23, 2003

I was very peripherally involved in a fight at about 10 o’clock last night on the redline, riding home from work. By very peripherally I mean that I was jostled, and seriously considered at one point suggesting to the participants that they postpone their altercation until off CTA property, where the penalties for battery would be less. The fight ended rather suddenly when a big white-bearded old dude wearing a tan Members Only jacket burst onto the scene from out of nowhere and starting punching everybody in the face and stepping and crushing a formerly happy but alarmed young couple’s wicker picnic basket. Finally, a pink-haired punk woman with a pierced septum made an appeal to civility and orderly society by screaming that it was time to get the cops. I don’t want to glorify violence here (although it was very exciting) and so I’ll skip the other details of the fight and go right to the terrible aftermath of the violence, which should serve to dissuade anybody from utilizing violent means to resolve conflict in the future. After the winner of the fight (not counting the picnic basket stomping Santa Claus, who didn’t really seem to have a clear objective in entering the melee, aside from punching people in the face) fled the train at the Fullerton stop, we other passengers made some room for the loser of the fight to sit down. “Could somebody loan me a mirror?” he asked. An asian woman passed him a stylish compact mirror from her purse and he looked at the knot at his forehead and his swollen cheek and then hung his head in dismay. “Woe!” he wailed, “now all the botox is going to flow from my forehead and into my cheeks and chin!”

Brian 12:08 AM

Wednesday, June 11, 2003

Somebody,..no, make that a group of people, just walked down the hall stomping and looking in my office and laughing. I may, or may not, have been napping at my desk when the stompers stomped by. I think that they may have been trying to wake me up. At first, I was a little bit peeved about it. I felt like running down the hall to their desks and then stomping around while shouting, “There! How do you like it?! How do you like it when you are trying to work or nap and somebody keeps stomping around!!” But then I realized - I’m like that Koala bear in the zoo. You know, like when you go to the zoo when you’re only twelve years old after you’ve pleaded for months and months with your parents to go to the zoo because you read about the Koala bear coming to town in a notice posted in a bookmobile. But then when you finally get a chance to see him the Koala bear is just holding onto a tree in the back of its habitat and sleeping and it’s heartbreakingly disappointing because he’s not dancing or singing or solving crimes or giving out hugs like you had anticipated for the last five months. I mean, that lazy Koala bear wasn’t even, like, eating Fig Newtons or practicing judo moves or taking a dump or anything! It made me all teary-eyed and I had demanded that my Father remind the zookeeper about his obligations to entertain zoo-goers and wake the Koala bear up by poking it with a stick. And when that failed I also vaguely remember stomping and clapping and shouting at the Koala bear, until I was forcibly removed from the Koala bear habitat viewing area. So I guess I can’t really blame these stompers. I mean, there I was, just sleeping in my habitat. That’s not exciting. I can’t blame them for wanting to see me doing something interesting, like drinking coffee out of a styrofoam cup, or nervously plucking my eyebrow hairs while doing Westlaw research and putting them in a little pouch that I made out of a large post-it note and some staples, or writing an entry for this blog while periodically looking at some research notes so that it looks like I’m being productive. I only hope that Koala bear can forgive me. I mean, nowadays he’s probably miserable and imprisoned somewhere in a Koala bear breeding program, forced to eat Viagra-laced Fig Newtons and walk two hours a day on a Koala-sized treadmill, when all he ever wanted to be was a Koala bear poet. But still, I hope that Koala bear can forgive me.

Brian 2:44 PM

Sunday, June 08, 2003

“Now that! THAT’S CONVENIENCE!” my new neighbor kept shouting yesterday. Please allow me provide the necessary background to put his shouting in context: I moved last week but yesterday was the first chance I really had to “move in.” This last work week was all about crawling between anonymous boxes to sleep on my official Sears Sir Edmund Hillary cot in the kitchen and wearing the same pair of black socks to work everyday because my other pair of black socks was packed in a box somewhere. But so anyway, yesterday I had my first chance to start settling in and about midday I was on the porch in back beating a rug olde tyme style, like, you know, to clean it. See, traditional Chicago residential architecture seems to consist for the most part of rickety three-level brick buildings. In the back of the buildings there is always a sort of decaying wood scaffolding with a landing for each unit and stairs up through the whole mess. Usually the scaffolding is full of plants, barbecue grills, chained bicycles and pigeons that give you weary looks when you come climbing up through the scaffolding as they scuffle out of the way. The whole set-up reminds me of those pueblo houses - those houses built into the sides of a cliff with ladders up to doors. So anyway, my unit’s on the third floor and I had draped the rug over the railing and was beating it old tyme style (a little trick I picked up at an “olde tyme working farmhouse” demonstration I visited as a child - it’s a technology - beating a rug with a stick - still employed by the Amish and other technophobic rug-using cultures, or so I’m told). My building’s built in a sort of “U” shape, and there’s a valley between the two cliffs where there’s a parking lot with various dumpsters scattered around. While I was beating my rug one of my third floor neighbors from a few units down walked out onto his landing with two full plastic garbage bags and made like he was about to walk down the stairs. But then noticed that there was dumpster right beneath his landing, and then he noticed it was open. I saw him stop and think about, then he very carefully held his plastic bags over the side of the landing and dropped them into the dumpster below. I heard him mutter, “Wow, that’s really convenient!” He was out on the landing a few minutes later, this time with an old lamp and battered lampshade, which he eagerly dropped over the side of the landing into the dumpster. “Very VERY convenient!” he said. Then ensued a series of more and more preposterous items which he dropped into the dumpster - an old alligator head, a manikin arm wearing a mitten, an armload of glass jars half full of pickle juice, a framed Frida Kahlo print, a banker’s box full of faux Faberge eggs with “Easter” magic markered on the side of the box, two rubberbanded sheafs of mouldering nude woman postcards from the 70's, an old television tube. Each time he dropped something into the dumpster he shouted about how convenient it was, I could hear him shouting in his apartment. “Convenient! That’s fucking convenient, Jimbo! You hear me Jimbo? Fucking convenient!” Each time he went back into his apartment he would reappear on his landing more quickly than before, each time more agitated than the last. It was almost as if he viewed the open dumpster below him as some sort of short-lived miracle that he had to take advantage of before it disappeared. I was overcome and stopped my rug beating to stare, risking a “what’re you looking at?!” from an obviously angry and unstable man, but it was worth it. He began hurling stuff with less care and missing the dumpster. People below him in the river bottom (parking lot), were ducking and covering and pointing up at the madman on his third floor landing raining human detritus onto them. I saw the neighbors below begin to conspire among themselves, like they were readying to mount an attack on this third floor landing. But then the guy appeared on his landing and upended an old drywall mud bucket full of old doorknobs that hailed down in and around the dumpster below, bouncing off the asphalt. When the bucket was empty he hurled it off the landing with an over-the-head-two-handed throw, He-man and the Masters of the Universe style. “CONVENIENCE!!!” he bellowed. The people in the parking lot dispersed. Shortly after that the cops arrived. I went into my apartment to hide. I don’t know who Jimbo is, but his room mate is my new favorite neighbor.

Brian 2:22 PM

Monday, June 02, 2003

I just moved into a new place. My parents were nice enough to come into town to help me move. The move went fine, although I always doubt the sagacity of keeping a koi pond during a move, and I move at least once a year it seems. The new place has a dishwasher too, so I had ceased all dishwashing activity in anticipation of the move. Why do dishes have to be clean to move them as long as I have enough old plastic grocery bags to wrap them in? That’s just a outdated and pointless social convention, probably dating back to covered wagon times. But anyway, after we were done moving my parents wanted to drive downtown to see my office. I offered, like, a thousand times to get a taxi for us, so we wouldn’t have to drive in the downtown traffic on Saturday. Dad: “No, seriously, I LIKE to drive downtown, I find it relaxing.” Me: “Listen Dad, I never drive downtown and I wouldn’t be able to point out the streets.” Mom: “But I LIKE to navigate! And I’ve got a map of Chicago in my purse!” Me: “It’s no problem to get a taxi! And then we can just ride along and relax! Mom: “But I brought this map of Chicago!” Dad: (in a serious tone of voice) “Brian, your Mother is pretty good at reading a map.” Me: “I’m not disputing that, it’s just that the traffic gets pretty bad in the city during the weekends.” Dad: “Fiddlesticks! I’m driving!” Mom: “And this way we won’t have to find a parking spot!” Reluctantly, I got in the back seat, put on my seatbelt, checked it, and resigned myself to my fate. As background, it’s important to note that my parents are accustomed to driving in a town where what you might call the “left turn lane,” is used as the “senior citizen lane.” five minutes later.... Mom: “Watch out for that horse and cart!” Dad: “I saw that horse and cart like five minutes ago!” ... (then in a thoughtful tone of voice) “That might be a fun job, being a horse cart driver!” Mom: (in a panicky voice) “Oh! Oh! Oh! That car’s stopping! Brake Bob! Brake Bob!!” Dad: (irritated) “I’m STOPPING Sally!” Mom: “Watch out for that blue car!” Dad: “I saw that blue car. You can only point things out to me (gesturing by swinging his arm in front him, indicating a 160 degree arc in front of the car) that are outside my range of view. This is my range of view (gesturing), you should only point things out that are outside my (gesturing) range of view. Mom: “Your head keeps swivelling around!” Dad: “I’m watching the traffic!” Mom: “You are not! You’re gawking.” Dad: “I have to move my head to look at the traffic!” Mom: “Gawker!” ... “I think the guy in that truck is drunk!” Dad: “He is not drunk!” Mom: “He’s a drunkard.” (looking at her map) “Okay, maybe you could take Kinzie to Wabash, or Lake past Grand to State, or, oh, perhaps we could go Clark to Johns to Randolph street, and then circle around...” Dad: (shouting) “All these MAYBES and PERHAPS just aren’t helping! I need a fully formed plan. I need concise instructions on where to turn! I can’t “maybe” turn. I can only “turn” or “not turn!” This is a binary system! Those are your options, “turn,” or “not turn.” Mom: “Fine. Take Kinzie over to Wabash. Or maybe.....” But so anyway, to my parent’s driving and navigating credit, we made it. And the koi are doing fine.

Brian 10:28 AM

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